Post-concussion symptoms could be due to PTSD

Post-concussion syndrome, which often includes headaches, can persist for many months especially after a minor injury (yes, mild injury is more likely to cause post-concussion syndrome than a severe one).
However, little is known about prognosis after the injury. The symptoms fall into three categories – cognitive (such as memory, concentration difficulties), somatic (headaches, dizziness, etc), and emotional (irritability, anxiety, depression). A study by French physicians recently published in JAMA Psychiatry, also took into account the fact that injuries are often sustained during psychologically distressing events (car accidents, assaults, falls) and looked for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in those patients.

The authors conducted a study of patients seen at an emergency department for a mild head injury. They checked on these patients for persistent symptoms three months after the concussion. The study included 534 patients with head injury and 827 control patients with non-head injuries.

The study showed that three months after the injury, 21.2 percent of head-injured and 16.3 percent of nonhead-injured patients had post-concussion syndrome, while 8.8 percent of head-injured patients met the criteria for PTSD compared with only 2.2 percent of control patients.

Their conclusion was that it is important to differentiate post-concussion syndrome from PTSD because it has important consequences, in terms of treatment, insurance resource allocation and advice provided to patients and their families. They also stressed the importance of considering PTSD in all patients with mild traumatic brain injury who suffer persistent symptoms.